I am currently in Srinagar ,
Kashmir . It is very cold here, very cold, so I
have sat down underneath a mountain of blankets, one of which is so heavy I
have to stand up to move it. It is crushing me. Yesterday I hit a bit of a wall
and was sick of everything so I ate two bars of cadbury’s fruit and nut and
watched cricket for most of the day in bed then watched Sunderland vs
Chelsea/Arsenal vs. West Brom . What a day for England
Today I have marginally more energy
and may attempt some sight seeing this afternoon by Bicycle. The day after
yesterday was just a 12 hour journey through the Kashmir valley from Jammu to Kashmir by Jeep,
that though beautiful, has seemed to knock something out of me, mainly energy
and enthusiasm for general touristy things.
Past week has been ruddy good fun
though. Last weekend I was in Shimla
which is as British and alpine a town as I have seen in India India
The town square was very British and
with a church in one corner and enough room for a large Christmas tree come the
season. In fact the whole town seemed very ‘Night Before Christmas’ it had a
smell and a feel of Christmas and skiing. Shimla has little to do but has a
nice Coffee house where I sat reading and saw Emma for the first time making
notes on War and Peace, then having bumped into each other again later at the
bus ticket counter and we went for lunch.
Emma introduced me to an old fella
in the Indian Coffee House named Professor Sharma. A white haired academic of
several disciplines by his own account, these included English, French, History
and Politics. Science wasn’t one of them as he described the opposite of
gravity as love. Everyone knows it’s
magnets. To add to the confusion Professor Sharma would go in to rhyme whenever
he lost his way in a conversation. One example would be, ‘to be happy in life,
you need a wife, then you will have no strife, as long as you have no knife.’
We then decided we would head to
Mcloed ganj together to pop in and see the Dalai Lama. The Lama goes by a few
different names ‘Big D’, ‘Lam dog’, ‘lamarama’ ‘The Artist Formerly Known As
Dalai’ but he prefers D-Lam.
We got the night bus to Dharamsala
not without incident. There were a group
of young Indian men on the bus making a hell of a lot of noise, playing music
on their mobiles like yutes in the UK
At this point it would be easy to
assume it was a bit of harmless fun, But when Emma turned round to see a
blanket moving slightly too vigorously it appeared there activities were rather
more sordid than I had first assumed. To be fair to the fellas I can’t think of
a more appropriate time than a 10 hour packed-bus journey through the foothills
of the Himalayas .
Dharamsala/
McLeod ganj
Having got to Dharamsala safe but
scarred we shared a cab with Jonas and Linnea another couple of tourists who had the
pleasure of travelling on the ‘wankbus’ Up the hill to McLeod ganj during which
the music was fantastic some R&B track where the exact lyrics were ‘I wanna
make love so bad right now.’ Just the sort of thing I want to listen to when
I’ve just woken up slightly befuddled at 5 in the morning. I believe it was Akon.
McLeod Ganj is pretty nice, D-Lam
chose well other people living in exile need to take heed I think. I think if I
was going to have to live in exile I would choose a nice holiday destination,
either the Canaries or perhaps the Caribbean .
I would have loved it if D-Lam chose somewhere like Jamaica
McLeod was fun, a lot of Buddhists
or possibly skinheads hard to tell to be honest. I can’t imagine there being a
massive rightwing contingent in McLeod but the EDL seem to be all over the
place these days.
The best find from the time in
McLeod was probably this café ‘Illiterati’ which is probably the most pretentious
place I have ever been but came up with the goods which was nice. Amazing views
across the valley, truly brilliant food (coffee, saffron and almond ice cream),
a piano with no shortage of talented pianists and a shed load of books. I spent
a fair few hours there eating, reading, tinkling a few keys (with headphones
on) and drinking good coffee. The Belgian fella who owned it was nice. He
seemed to base his personality on the French philosopher from the Day Today but
saw life as being a lot more futile. He was nice enough, his hero was Fernando
Pessoa and he gave me the book of
disquiet to flick through, which is definitely on my reading list now. Trips to the cafe were punctuated with Tibet
Aside from illiterate and chilling
with Big D that’s about it, walked up to Dal lake which wasn’t as tasty as I’d
hoped, saw the last over of a local cricket cup final ‘the peace cup’.
So me and Emma headed to Kashmir
stopping off at Jammu Jammu was pretty transitty but Srinagar Agra
to see the Taj then I’m off to Nepal
OTHER NEWS:
§
My hair is about one week away
from the Leo Sayer look I have been aiming for.
§
Some western style toilets have
an arse fountain post production
accessory attached, they are very good fun.
§
Watched a lot of live cricket
and football in Srinagar
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